Book Review: Mama Panya's Pancakes

Mama Panya and her son Adika set out to the market one day.  Mama Panya has a few coins in her pocket and plans to make pancakes for dinner.  Pancakes are Adika's favorite, and he asks Mama how much flour they will buy for the pancakes. "A little bit, and a little bit more," Mama responds. In his excitement, as Mama and Adika travel to and from the market, Adika invites many of their neighbors and friends to dinner, much to Mama Panya's chagrin.

As the story goes on, Mama Panya becomes more and more exasperated with Adika. "Ai yi!" she complains, "How much do you think I can stretch flour, my son?"  Adika responds, "A little bit, and a little bit more."

Mama Panya is worried about the generosity of her son, but when the neighbors and friends begin to arrive for the dinner, they come bearing gifts: fish from the stream, spices from the spice stand, more flour from the flour sellers.  Thus, like the loaves and fishes, a meager offering becomes a banquet for a village.

The beautiful drawings of the African countryside enhance this beautiful story, but the part I like best is this: Mama Panya teaches her son Adika that there will be plenty, and Adika believes Mama.  When Mama begins to get worried about having enough, Adika continues to act in faith, and that faith rings true when their banquet is blessed by the gifts that all the guests bring.

Perhaps the reason I loved this story so much is because my own Mom - a Mama Panya - taught me that God will provide.  And in Mama Panya's "Ai yi!" I could hear my own mom's distress and worry as she, at times, worried whether there would be enough.  And yet there always was.

Pick up Mama Panya's pancakes for a lively story that reminds us that in sharing our blessings, we are blessed to feast together.

Many thanks to Sara Yotter, assistant to the bishop of the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin of the ELCA for introducing me to this book at her workshop, "Nurturing Generous Families" this weekend.

Rich

I've been talking about hunger a lot in my work lately.  It started out a couple weeks ago when I taught a short confirmation elective on "Faith and Hunger."  In the course of the three-hour class, I invited students to reflect together on the issue of hunger both locally and globally.  I was impressed by their interest and their creative responses.

One activity, which I can't help but share with you, was this activity, which I found in the Just Eating Middle School Curriculum from the Presbyterian Hunger Program.  The curriculum suggested doing the activity with bread but, knowing my middle school youth, I chose to do it with dark chocolate m&ms instead.  It's called the "Distribution Exercise" in the curriculum and the basic gist of the activity is this.

When you divide up the world into three groups: high income, middle income, and low income nations, the population breakdown is something like this:

High Income Nations: 15% of population
Middle Income Nations: 25% of population
Low Income Nations: 60% of population

I divided my confirmation group into groups roughly based on the breakdown above.  I had 12 youth, so I assigned 2 youth to be "High Income Nations," 3 youth to be "Middle Income Nations," and 7 youth to be "Low Income Nations."  Each group had a couple of case study cards that they had to read out to the group.  They seemed marginally interested in this, but then the fun began.

I pulled out one of those large bags of m&ms and a food scale.  I handed each group of kids a solo cup and put the food scale on the table.  There was also a calculator, and I did a quick review of how to calculate percentages.  Then the math started.

The kids had to divide up the m&ms based on the global distribution of wealth.  Here's the breakdown that the curriculum suggested:

High Income Nations: 90% of snack.
Medium Income Nations: 8% of snack.
Low Income Nations: 2% of snack.

Well, the first group (2 kids) needed 2 solo cups.  The second group had about a third of a solo cup to share among 3 kids.  The last group had about 1/2 an inch of m&ms in the bottom of a solo cup.  And there were 7 kids in that group.

They were pretty floored.  To be honest, so was I.  I didn't think the first group would need an additional cup.  Just goes to show that even though I thought I realized the inequality of resources in our world, I was still floored to see it in this simple, graphic way.

It really brought home what Rob Bell said in his Nooma video, "Rich" (which we watched to start off the lesson):

"Maybe you have this sense, you look around the world and you have this sense that you don't have that much because you look around and see people who have even more.  But it's a dangerous thing when we start to think that 'our' world is 'the' world."

God has richly blessed me, and my congregation, and my confirmation students.
May we be a blessing to others.